Omega Omega
by Smileyfax
Summary: Daria discovers something rather unusual behind the door in the attic...Sequel to/inspired by fics by The Angst Guy.
1. Chapter 1

Daria was a little worried when she woke up to find Jane missing from their shared bed.

She put on her glasses, slipped a robe on over the nightgown, and looked throughout the house. No Jane.

She considered going out and looking for her, but entering the kitchen she saw that Jane had thoughtfully left her a meal. After digging in for half an hour or so, she finally noticed a note on the refridgerator:

"Daria, don't be alarmed if I'm not home when you wake up. I have some errands to run that might keep me out past sunset, but if they do I'll just stow away at the high school like I used to a few months ago. I'll be back tomorrow. Hugs and kisses, Jane."

Daria was a little relieved that Jane's absence was planned. She decided, in lieu of venturing out into the wilds of Lawndale, to kick back in the living room and read the latest haul of books Jane had scavenged from Books by the Ton.

The first novel she plucked out of the box was Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. It wouldn't be something she regularly went for, but she wasn't too picky these days.

As she read, her thoughts began to slowly wander. She recalled the day, some months ago, that she was in the garage, looking through old boxes of hers, that she passed out. That was just a day or two before Jane moved in, actually...

She realized that there were in fact more boxes upstairs of which she was unaware of the contents. Old books of hers might be up there...

Daria marked her place in the book and retreated upstairs. There, it was simple to pull the ladder down and climb up inside.

She squinted; even with her keen night-sight, she could barely make out anything in the attic. She climbed back down and retrieved one of the lanterns Jane kept in the linen closet, switching it on. Able to see now, she opened up the nearest box. Tax records. Daria closed it and pushed it to the side.

The next box had Quinn's baby things. Daria felt a little sad about what had happened to Quinn, but reflected that Quinn wouldn't have had a chance either way.

Daria was about to go through more boxes when she noticed someting unusual at the far side of the attic -- a door. Daria never had cause to come up here before, so didn't know where the door led. If she had to guess, she would say it was a closet. Daria approached the door and turned the knob.

Another Daria stood on the other side of the door.

XXXX

Daria gritted her teeth as she fired her shotgun into the charging wall of zombies. The shot knocked a few down, and a few more tripped over those, slowing the mass just long enough to allow Daria to climb up the ladder to the attic. She was unable to pull the ladder up after her, as the undead had already reached it and begun climbing up, but she managed to slam the door down and move a nearby box over it, buying her a few more seconds.

"How could I have been so stupid!" she cursed herself. Over the past few weeks, she noticed the number of zombies in town was dramatically increasing. When once she would only find a few of the unconscious undead in her daily scavenging, she would find upwards of several dozen on her street alone. She strongly suspected that the dead was somehow able to sense her, even from great distances, and had come for her. She had gotten extra lumber to reinforce the boarded-up windows and improve the strength of the doors, but just after midnight the weight of the zombies pressing on the house grew too much.

She was first alerted of this by a loud cracking sound and the increase in volume of hunger moans. She ran to the front door to discover that the frame itself was seconds away from giving in entirely -- she could see hands thrusting their way into the house -- and so Daria grabbed her shotgun (which she had thoughtfully left propped up next to the staircase) and dashed up the stairs just as the hungry, angry mob battered her door all the way down and rushed in.

In retrospect, staying in her house had been blindingly stupid. She had stayed out of an uncharacteristic sense of nostalgia and sentiment; the high school or the local Payday would have sufficed much better as fortresses, but Daria just had to act like a regular human being for once. And now it would cost her her life.

She contemplated the shotgun in her lap, and thought that at least turning the upper two-thirds of her head into a fine mist would be as quick and painless as she could expect. She looked around for any other option...

A door.

Daria stood and dashed to it, hoping for maybe a crawl-space entrance or something. If she could wait out the zombies until sunrise, she might have a chance. She turned the knob.

Another Daria stood on the other side of the door.

XXXX

Daria was about to speak when the other Daria abruptly fainted. For one brief moment she had thought the closet contained a full-length mirror, but the little details (the shotgun that she didn't actually have, the fainting, the fact that the other Daria was in fact alive) dispelled that notion quickly enough. Questions shot through Daria's mind: Where did Other Daria come from? How was she alive? How could there be two Darias?

Daria then noticed that the room the other Daria was in was, for the most part, a mirror of the attic she stood in herself. And then she noticed the door at the far end fly open, zombies climbing up, hungry for the living flesh before her. She reacted instantly, scooping up the shotgun Other Daria had let fall and firing into the dead (Jane had insisted on teaching her how to use the various firearms she had acquired, which paid off in spades now). After she slowed down their advance some, she reached down again and grabbed Other Daria by the jacket, pulling her forcefully into her attic and slamming the door. She searched Other Daria for ammo to reload the shotgun as she kept an eye on the door, waiting for it to rattle, fists pounding on it from the other side, smashing it down...

Nothing happened. The door remained silent. Daria decided to let sleeping doors lie, and focused on the new arrival. She wondered how Jane would react. Before she could do anything else, though, she started feeling hungry again, and retreated downstairs to the kitchen, where Jane had left the cadavers Daria fed on.

XXXXXXXXXX

Another new fic from me in a rather short period of time! I wonder if I'm actually more productive in the summer months than in the winter ones...perhaps I should move to a warmer climate and be productive all year 'round.

Anyway, this is my mashup of TAG fics Omega Jane and Illusions, available at these two links: . and . . He stated in a thread on the PPMB that people could go ahead and do whatever crazy thing they liked with his fics, so I took that as an invitation to write this thing up that's been quietly rolling around in my head for a while. (IF you think it sux and that I'm a doodyhead, TAG, I'll gladly take it down and punish myself and stuff).

By the way, since this is pretty much a sequel to Omega Jane, you should probably go and read that so you know what the heck is going on. I'm going to be writing this fic as if you already read Omega Jane, so if you haven't already read it a lot of stuff will go just flying over your head. It's also a damn good fic on its own, so read it no matter what.

Also, be sure to check my profile for the latest notes on my fics and stuff. 


	2. Chapter 2

Jane fired up the engine of the military Humvee, grinning from ear to ear. While her passion was art, there was just something about the powerful thrum of an engine that excited her.

She had gotten the Humvee at Carter Air Force Base, twenty miles outside of town. There were no planes at the base -- the government had evacuated all its forces to rural areas, remote islands, and so forth in an attempt to preserve them once most of the major cities had fallen -- but there was a small stockpile of ground-based weaponry -- military assault rifles, high explosives, and of course the Humvee. Jane had no real need for any of it -- her regular weapons suited her just fine, and the Humvee wasn't better or worse in function than the SWAT van she'd seen parked behind the police department.

But you never knew.

As she drove back to Daria's house (even though she was the only living resident, she still regarded the house as Daria's), she took note of the corpses which lay out in the open. Their numbers had been steadily declining, so to keep Daria on her diet (brain food, Jane thought of it darkly), she had had to widen her search net. Jane tried not to think of what would happen when she finally ran out of bodies.

She pulled into the driveway of the Morgendorffer house, walked to the door, and opened it. She noticed Daria laying on the couch, shotgun propped up against an arm. "Aw, she tried to stay up for me," Jane said, touched.

Content that Daria was safe, she went through the house into the garage, opening the garage door so she could unload the military gear into the house.

XXXX

Daria woke up. Light shone through the slats of the boarded-up windows. It was morning.

She breathed a sigh of relief: she had made it through the night.

Then she realized she was in the living room, when her last memory was of barricading herself in the attic.

"A nightmare," she realized aloud. After all, the horrific dream had ended with her confronting a ghoulish version of herself. She must have simply fallen asleep on the couch.

She sat up and moved her neck around -- it had a crick in it from sleeping on the couch.

"Hi, Daria," Jane said cheerily, as she came out from the garage and walked to the staircase.

Jane made it up three stairs before she realized what had just happened. She slowly turned to the couch, to Daria, who stared at her with equal intensity and shock.

Daria grabbed for her shotgun first, bringing it to bear just as Jane brought the machine pistols bungeed at her hips up.

The two stood like that for a minute. Then, Jane (very slowly) backed down the stairs, one step at a time, their guns following each other.

"Say something," Jane finally broke the silence.

Daria was silent.

"SAY SOMETHING, GOD DAMNIT!" Jane finally screamed.

"You didn't say, 'Simon Says.'" Daria chided her.

"What?"

"I said, you didn't say, 'Simon Says.'"

Jane stared at Daria for a long minute. Then, her face twitched. A moment later, she snorted. Finally, the two of them broke down in hysterical laughter, letting their guns fall to the side, as they ran towards each other and embraced, and their laughter turned to tears, tears of relief and mourning and everything else.

XXXX

Nearly an hour passed before the two friends could speak.

"I can't believe it," Jane uttered. "It has to be a miracle."

"Quinn and her angels," Daria answered, thinking of the time her sister had gone through a guardian angel phase.

Jane smiled. "I can believe it. I can believe it now. I stopped believing in God when Trent died."

Daria nodded. "I stopped believing when Quinn died." She began tearing up again. "At least I have you back, Jane," she murmured.

Daria leaned forward and captured Jane's lips in a kiss. Jane jerked her head back.

"Whoa whoa whoa, what?" Jane said, defensive. "What are you doing?"

"I'm...I was kissing you," Daria explained. "I haven't kissed you since you died."

Jane blinked. "Since I what? Daria, I never died. You died. And I'm pretty sure you never kissed me."

Daria's mouth now hung open. She closed it. "You mean, you don't remember our first kiss? It was the day I botched your hair dye job. You came over in Trent's car to talk about it, and one thing led to another..."

Jane shook her head. "What? No! I was still pissed at you the next day. TOM kissed you that day."

The two alleged friends stared at each other, confusion and doubt rearing their heads. "You're not my Daria," Jane said simply. She stood and ran upstairs.

"What?" Daria followed her.

Jane reached the door to Daria's room and opened it. Inside, Daria -- her Daria -- lay on the bed, dead to the world. (Literally). Jane approached her, making sure Daria hadn't sustained any fatal gunshot wounds from her doppleganger.

The other Daria reached the door. "No," she denied her own eyes, even though they told her she was observing her own corpse on the bed.

"You keep my body?" Daria said, aghast. "I have the decency to blow your head off, and you KEEP MY BODY?"

"Daria, it's not like that. She's alive. She's smart."

"Smart? Damnit, Jane, I would rather be DEAD than that damned existence!"

"Well, you...er, she doesn't seem to mind."

"Oh really? So at night-time she gets up and you two just hang out like six billion people haven't died in the past year."

"Well, not all the time. Mostly she just eats...uh, what they eat, and sleeps with me--"

"Excuse me?" Daria interrupted. "You won't kiss me, but you'll FUCK THAT THING?"

Jane realized her mistake. "No no no! Daria, it's not like that at all!"

Daria slapped Jane across the face. "Don't you fucking dare speak to me again, you sick bitch." Daria left.

Jane touched the side of her face, her cheek burning where she had been struck. Finally, she realized she should go after Daria. "Wait! Daria!" she cried out. She ran out the door, down the stairs, and to the open front door. Daria was nowhere in sight on the street.

"DARIA!" she shouted out.

"_Daria..._" her voice echoed back.

Jane checked her watch. "Sunset's in eight hours, Daria! This is the only safe place in the world!" she shouted. "Please, come back!"

She waited for another five minutes, but Daria didn't return. Jane sighed and went back inside (leaving the front door open).

On an impulse, she checked the refridgerator, where she had left the note for Daria. A new note was there, in Daria's careful post-mortem handwriting.

"Jane, I found something unusual in the attic..."


	3. Chapter 3

Daria returned an hour before sunset.

"I overreacted," Daria greeted. Her voice was hoarse and her eyes were puffy. "I couldn't accept that you weren't...my Jane. I'm sorry."

Jane nodded, then embraced her...new friend. "I'm sorry, too. I wish I were your Jane and you were my Daria."

"Then my Jane would still be sexually frustrated and your Daria would be feeling up a corpse."

Jane chuckled. "I'm not actually intimate with her..."

Daria cut her off. "I don't really want to know. I guess if you say she's not like the rest, I can accept that -- but if I ever get the feeling she wants a hot meal, I'll blow my brains out. So to speak."

Jane nodded. "That's fair enough." She checked her watch. "Say, she should be getting up in a few minutes. Did you want to speak to her?"

Daria cast a glance upstairs, then shuddered. "No. Not tonight, at least. I'd rather keep my distance from...her...for now."

"Okay. While you were out today, I fixed up Quinn's room for you to sleep in."

Daria made a face. "Quinn's room? I'd almost rather bunk with that dead doppelganger."

The two shared a laugh. "I missed this," Jane said.

Daria made a noise of agreement, then changed the topic. "Say, did you ever figure out the mystery of where I came from?"

"Oh!" Jane retrieved the note her Daria had left. "Daria says you came from the attic closet. Er, my Daria, that is."

"I really hope other Darias don't start showing up, otherwise it's going to be a real headache when you ask for one of us and four respond," Daria pointed out.

"We'll burn that bridge when we get to it, Morgendorffer," Jane shot back, simultaneously dismissing and solving the problem.

"Hmph. The zombie should be Morgendorffer, not me."

"She was here first." Jane stuck out her tongue.

"So...did you check the door today?" Daria asked.

"Oh, yeah. I didn't open it, though, since you said you left a mob of zombies on the other side."

"Yes..." Daria said, beginning to sink into thought. "It might be worth checking again later -- perhaps it requires some specific stimulus, like the time of day or something...I'd also like to go to the library or the bookstore tomorrow and pick up some science texts. It's worth researching before we go poking around in there."

XXXX

The next few days passed quickly. Jane and Morgendorffer were becoming fast friends.

"So your me never went out with Tom?" Jane asked. "Or even Evan? What about...oh hell, you called him Bobby Bighead, but I don't even remember his real name."

Morgendorffer shook her head. "You were in the closet still, and so you never dated anyone until me."

Jane thought for a minute. "Did Alison ever come up?"

Morgendorffer's calm face suddenly shifted into an angry scowl. "That...that harpy..."

Jane put her hands up. "Whoa! Okay, backing up!" If the topic still set her off over a year after it had transpired, Jane didn't want to push those buttons.

After studying several books on quantum mechanics, Morgendorffer came to the conclusion that a wormhole lay in the attic closet which connected their two separate universes.

Finally, five days after Morgendorffer's arrival, they decided to open the door again -- at high noon, of course, so that they wouldn't be deluged by the dead.

"Ready?" Morgendorffer asked. Jane was crouched at the far end of the attic, the assault rifle from the military base in hand, ready to go full-auto on any zombie assault. Jane nodded.

Morgendorffer turned the knob and pulled open the door. On the other side of the door stood a third Daria, who looked at her double in shock, noticed the gun Jane had pointed at her, and fainted.

"Is that going to happen every time?" Jane wondered. 


	4. Chapter 4

Morgendorffer let her shotgun lead the way as she stepped into the third Daria's attic. She noticed that number three didn't have any weapons on her, and wondered if she didn't wear them during daylight hours. Not smart. Morgendorffer used to not bother wearing her weapons during daylight hours, until another survivor pulled into town. The man was half-crazed and had attempted to rape her; she had had to gouge his eyes out before strangling him. (Had he been more lucid, she probably would not have survived). Another survivor would have instilled hope in her that the human race may eventually pull through, but...

Morgendorffer realized something was wrong as she got off the ladder into the upstairs hallway. The lights were on.

"No, it's not wrong. It's right," she commented to herself.

She opened her (well, Daria 3's) door and stepped into the room. She reached up on her toes and hit the power button on the TV, then realized that her TV had never worked even before the downfall of man. Instead, she turned and saw the LED on her computer was on, indicating it was in standby. She moved the mouse, waking the computer up. The first thing she thought to do was open up a browser and go to a news website.

"There's no zombies," she said to herself breathlessly.

The world wasn't perfect, to be sure. Plane crashes, school shootings, wars, but humans were still at the top of the food chain.

She stood up and went back out into the hallway. She peeked into the master bedroom; the bed was unmade. Quinn's room was pink as ever.

She went downstairs and turned the TV in the living room on. Sick, Sad World was having a close look at Bigfoot sightings in Elvis impersonator contests. The last episode she'd seen in her own world had been a report on how the flu victims were coming back to life, and recommended methods of disposal. It had saved her life.

Finally, she was drawn to the kitchen. Trembling, she stood before the refridgerator door. One hand reached out and pulled it open. The wave of cold air hit her, and she shivered a little. Her hand grabbed the first thing she saw -- one of Quinn's diet sodas -- and she popped it open and drank it down. It was the sweetest thing she had ever tasted.

"Daria, that's my pop, damnit!" Morgendorffer turned, startled. It was Quinn. Her lip quivered, then she ran over and embraced her sister.

"Oh God, Quinn, I've missed you so badly," she confessed.

"Daria, what the hell--" Quinn suddenly made a face. "Oh my GOD, what is that smell? Daria, did you roll in skunk poop or something?"

Morgendorffer suddenly realized it had been months since she had taken a proper shower. "Oh, uh, sorry about that." She backed away from Quinn sheepishly. Quinn's eyes fell on what was in Morgendorffer's other hand.

"Daria, is that a shotgun?" Quinn's eyes were wide, and her voice sounded smaller. "Did Dad keep that up in the attic?"

"Huh?"

"The ATTIC, Daria? The one you were looking for some of your old junk in? Gawd!" She kept looking at the shotgun. "Are you going to take that to one of those toys for guns programs or something?"

"Er. Something like that."

"Good. Well, before you do, go take a shower. I'd just die if Sandi or Stacy came over and smelled you." Quinn made a dismissive hand gesture and walked into the living room, where Morgendorffer heard the faint sounds of one of Quinn's vapid modeling shows come on.

She went back upstairs, into the attic, where Jane stood watch over the still-unconscious third Daria. "Jane, there aren't any zombies here."

"What? No zombies at all?"

"No. Quinn's alive. Trent should still be alive too!" Daria could barely keep the joy out of her voice.

Jane's face darkened, though. "Daria...if these people don't have zombies...they might still be open to infection. Just because we're immune it doesn't mean the virus isn't around us, on our clothes, covering every inch of our skin. We may have just damned this whole world."

XXXX

"Quinn, I need you to come upstairs."

Quinn rolled her eyes and stood up. Daria was probably going to try and play a trick on her and get her to look through the attic for her or something.

She grudgingly marched up the stairs, finding the attic door hanging open, stairs down. "Damnit, Daria, do you really want me to go up to that dusty old place?"

"Yes, Quinn. Please, it's important."

She climbed the ladder, rolling her eyes, muttering. She looked up to see Daria staring back down at her, tears brimming in your eyes. "Well, I'm up here. What do you want?"

Daria hugged Quinn again. "I'm so sorry, Quinn," she said, making Quinn nervous.

"Daria, what did you do? Why are you sorry?"

Instead of answering her, Daria turned to the back of the attic. "Okay, Jane," she said.

A woman with black hair in a ponytail emerged from the shadows in the rear of the attic. "Hey, you look like..." Quinn trailed off as the woman raised a big gun, one of those Dirty Harry guns that could shoot through people like it was nothing, and it was pointed at her and

XXXX

Morgendorffer flinched as the shot rang out. She allowed a few tears to escape before swallowing down the grief. She still had to kill herself.

She aimed the shotgun squarely at the face of her counterpart. She swallowed. She primed a shell into the chamber.

Just as her finger tightened on the trigger, the other Daria opened her eyes. The eyes widened upon noticing the shotgun. Morgendorffer hesitated just long enough for Daria 3 to roll out of the way, knocking the shotgun away, the shot harmlessly knocking a hole in the floor. Daria 3 shot to her feet and rushed to the attic ladder, knocking Jane to the side. She stopped short upon seeing her dead sister -- allowing Morgendorffer to pump the shotgun and fire, this time catching Daria 3 in her back. She fell, paralyzed, blood starting to seep out of her mouth.

"Why?" she choked out.

"Because we made a mistake," Jane answered, caressing Daria 3's face before placing the Magnum to the side of her head and pulling the trigger.

XXXX

Jane was dumping the contents of a gasoline can around the attic, to incinerate the bodies, the house, and hopefully the virus. She had found the can in the garage of this house, and it was nearly full, so it shouldn't be a problem.

She tossed the empty can to the side, then rejoined Morgendorffer at the threshhold of the two doors. Jane withdrew a book of matches from her pocket, gave one last look to Morgendorffer, and struck the match, tossing it into the attic and withdrawing into her own universe along with Morgendorffer.

As the attic door closed, the front door opened. "Daria? You home?" John Lane called. After a moment, he noticed the smell of smoke. "Fire! FIRE!" he shouted, racing up the stairs. He saw that the flames came from the attic, and remembered that Daria was supposed to be cleaning up there today. He rushed up the ladder, unconcerned for his own health.

He saw Quinn first. Seeing her prone on the floor, he rationalized that she must have been overcome with smoke inhalation. He picked her body up, hopped down the ladder, raced her down the stairs, and laid her on the lawn, before rushing back inside. (He was in too much of a hurry to notice that a black pit had replaced one of Quinn's eyes).

Back in the attic, he found Daria a few feet in -- she had fallen behind some boxes, so John hadn't seen her first. He scooped her body up and rushed her outside with the same haste. In the distance, he could already hear the sirens as they grew louder.

He began to administer mouth-to-mouth to Daria. It was half a minute before he realized he tasted blood, and he took a moment to evaluate Daria. He realized that his chest compressions were driving blood from her lungs (perforated with buckshot) to her mouth, and he suppressed the urge to vomit. Then he noticed that her hair had a great deal of blood on it. He touched it, went through it, and he felt something wet, squishy, and sticky. He withdrew his fingers, now coated in blood and carrying a small, wrinkled piece of flesh.

He stared at it a moment before he realized it was a piece of Daria's brain.

The paramedics and fire-fighters found him sobbing uncontrollably, embracing Daria's corpse and rocking back and forth. At the hospital, he was given a strong sedative, so that he might finally rest.

The next day, John had developed a slight cough. The doctor thought it might be lingering effects from the smoke inhalation, and took no special note of it. However, he suspected he had the sniffles (likely from one of the nurses...the one attending John kept sneezing every ten minutes or so). He hoped whatever bug he had didn't interfere with his trip to New York City two days ahead -- it was his parents' anniversary, and he wanted to take them to a fine restaurant to celebrate.

A month later, 99% of that Earth's population was dead and walking. 


	5. Chapter 5

'And then I put my gun to her head and shot her.'

Jane was laying in bed, Daria -- her Daria, the dead one -- spooning her. Jane was telling her what had happened. (Not out loud, though, since they discovered they had tactile telepathy some time ago, a curious result of Daria's condition).

'I'm sorry you had to do that, Jane, but it was probably necessary,' Daria reassured her.

'Probably,' Jane echoed. A tear found its way out of her eye. 'It was the second time I've had to kill you.'

Daria remained silent.

'Morgendorrfer and I decided to never open the door again. It's just too risky.'

'Couldn't you wear NBC suits, to prevent exposure?'

The non-sequitur threw Jane off. 'I was always more fond of MTV suits, myself,' she replied.

'No, Jane, NBC suits are military-grade suits that protect the wearer against chemical, biological, or radioactive agents. I was researching them for a story about...well, about a biological outbreak, just before I got some first-hand experience in the matter.'

'That...hm, that might work,' Jane said. She yawned aloud. 'I'll have to make another trip to Carter AFB, though...' Her thoughts trailed off as consciousness left her, filling her head with the uneasy nightmares of a person who lived in a dead world.

XXXX

An hour after sunrise the next morning, Jane woke Morgendorffer to let her know she would be leaving. "I'm going to Carter Air Force Base. My Daria suggested that ABC suits would let us open the door safely."

Morgendorffer opened her mouth to protest, but then stopped. "Wait, that's actually a good idea. And they're NBC suits, Jane, not ABC."

"CBS suits, gotcha," Jane said with a faint smile. She secured her weapons into the Humvee and drove off. Morgendorffer turned away when she heard the vehicle coming back. Jane leaned out the window. "Oh, amiga, I almost forgot, my Daria's out of food. Could you pop a zombie or two and drag them into the kitchen? She'll take care of the rest. Ta!" And Jane drove off again, before Morgendorffer could express disgust at the idea.

XXXX

Reluctantly, Morgendorrfer began searching for the high cuisine that would sate the palate of her double. She wore blood-stained rubber gloves that she had found in the garage (obviously having been used for the purpose before) and drove Jane's beat-up pickup to haul the bodies in.

She drove two hours before finding the first body, laying half-in, half-out of a convenience store that had been looted of the last of its merchandise months ago. She hefted her shotgun and popped the inert body's head without any ceremony. Getting it back into the truck was another matter; Daria pulled and strained and wheezed, but finally managed to get the body up into the bed of the truck.

The next body she found was on the football field of Lawndale High. Morgendorffer vaguely recalled that Jane had made the place her home in the months immediately following the scouring of humanity. She dismissed the thought as she shot the slumbering zombie and began the work of hauling it into the truck bed. After ten minutes, she was completely out of breath and the body remained on the ground. "Okay, fuck it," she declared. She went back to the inside of the truck and searched under the seats. She found a spool of fishing line and returned to the body. She wound the line around each leg and the trailer hitch multiple times, making sure that the line was strong enough to support the body on her drive back. Satisfied, she got back into the truck and drove back to Casa Morgen...Lane...Morgen...hell, settle for Morgendorffer. (Two Morgendorffers did live there to one Lane, after all).

After turning off the ignition, she got out and opened the front door, in preparation to drag the bodies inside. A problem arose, however, when she returned to the truck and found one whole body and two legs. While she had apparently tied the fishing line tight enough, the connection between the legs themselves and the torso was tenuous enough that the friction from being dragged on the road was sufficient enough to separate the two. "Oh well," Morgendorffer lamented. "One body and change'll be enough for her, and if it's not, too bad."

XXXX

Morgendorffer lay awake well past midnight, idle thoughts meandering their way through her mind. She wasn't actually sure if it was midnight; when she first got her watch, she had had nothing save the sun by which to set it. All the other clocks in the world had run down, run out of power, or smashed to pieces. Being an intellectual of the information age, she mourned the passing of man's innovations just as much as man himself. No more atomic clock, no more Internet, no more air conditioning or refridgeration. In her own universe, she had found an old-fashioned record player that didn't require power, and had gone about collecting as many vinyl records as she could lay hands on. Still, she lamented the disappearance of the CD and the MP3.

She rolled over on her side, facing the window. One thing that had improved since the demise of civilization was the view at night -- with no more air or light pollution, the night sky became a truly breathtaking sight, like an infinite number of precious jewels spread across an expanse of black velvet. The moon was visible from the window -- it appeared to be just as tired as she was, looking like a half-lidded eye as it did. Slumber, though, eluded both of them.

An animalistic roar made its way through the window. The zombies -- one of the reasons Morgendorffer had trouble getting to sleep. Before coming here, her schedule had her staying up most nights, on the off-chance that her defenses would become breached. (Off-chance...hah). It didn't help that she felt as if she were slowly going insane as the days progressed. Once, she recalled reading a short story in which a man saved the world from a nuclear holocaust by going crazy, thus limiting the devestation to within his own head. In these late hours, Morgendorffer took this idea out and stroked it lovingly, like a young girl deciding which cat she would adopt. She would gladly sacrifice her own brain for the sake of six billion other lives...but alas, her mind couldn't buy into that solipsistic fantasy even if she wanted to.

She lay on her back again, staring down the length of her body to the door she had blockaded with the dresser. Though she had Jane's word, she still did not trust that...that other her. She hated and feared it on something of a primal level. It was, after all, literally the death of her. She could barely remember what it looked like when she first came face-to-face with it in the attic, and considered it a small blessing. She wondered how Jane would react if faced with a Jane-zombie...

Rap, rap, rap, came a sound from the door.

"'Tis some visitor...'" Morgendorffer said, out of an instinctual poetic sense.

"...nevermore..." rasped a voice from the other side of the door.

Morgendorffer's eyes shot open and she held her breath, suddenly deathly afraid of moving. For a few brief moments, she was seven again, and Mr. Bloody Bones was laying patiently in wait under her bed, inside her closet, behind every shadow cast in her room.

Then she heard the sound of something being slid under the door. In her mind's eye, she remembered a scene from the movie Phantasm, when the Tall Man had slid his fingers through the impossibly narrow seam between door and frame, then shook the image out of her mind. She got up to see what had been delivered. A delirious part of her mind suggested it was a valentine.

It was a simple piece of paper, folded in two. She opened it up and recognized her handwriting, deteriorated as it was from months of being dead.

"Other Daria," it began. "Jane told me that you lost your own Jane, that you loved her fully. I am as sorry as I can be for you -- if your Jane was anything like my Jane, she loved you back even more."

Morgendorffer could not read the rest of the note for quite some time; she was too busy sobbing.

XXXX

For breakfast, Morgendorffer decided to boil some water for oatmeal. She had found a box of the stuff with little candy dinosaurs in it, and it sounded rather delicious. (Jane might be sore later, but she was sure there was enough dinosaur oatmeal left in the world to feed the both of them until their retirement -- which would probably consist of an incredibly violent and painful surprise party).

As the water came to a boil on the battery-powered heater, Morgendorffer heard the sound of an engine close by. "Jane's back," she said aloud, turning off the heater and going outside.

The vehicle pulled into sight, and Daria wondered why Jane had changed cars. It was a blue, battered old sedan, and the driver, upon seeing her, slammed on the brakes and turned off the ignition a moment later.

It took Morgendorffer a moment to realize the driver was not, in fact, Jane, when the door opened and out stepped a woman with short red hair, a black tank top and eye patch, and military-green khakis. "Hey," she called out.

"Hey," Morgendorffer replied.

"You wouldn't happen to be the only survivor in Lawndale, would you? I'm looking for my family. My name's Penny Lane."

XXXXXXXXXX

I borrowed Mr. Bloody Bones from Ill Wind, an awesomely creepy Daria story by a fellow named Dervish. I really recommend it. (Unless you're a giant wuss...or it's windy out). 


	6. Chapter 6

Jane couldn't wait to get back home to Daria and Morgendorffer. Not only had she found several pairs of NBC suits, but she had also found instructions for setting up a clean room. They might not even need the suits!

"Huh, Morgendorffer got a new car," Jane mused aloud, noting the beaten-up blue sedan parked on the street in front of the house. She shrugged it off, parked behind it (the car blocked off the driveway, irritatingly enough), and got out, bounding towards the house.

"Lucy, I'm home!" Jane cried out with a faux-Cuban accent. "You got some 'splainin to do!"

"Jane..."

Jane turned at the voice.

"Penny?"

And so Jane had another tearful reunion with a loved one.

XXXX

Morgendorffer silently slipped away as the two Lane sisters cried, walking up the stairs to the guest room. She stopped for a moment at her old room, looking at the closed door. Thinking about it for a minute, she finally gulped and opened it.

The room was dark -- not dark enough that she couldn't see the shape on the bed. Her shape. She gulped again and tentatively approached the bed.

As she reached the bed, her eyes had adjusted enough to make out the other Daria's face. It was almost funny, except for the part where she was dead.

Morgendorffer took Daria's hand. "Uh...thank you for the card. It was an unexpected gesture. I hope you can understand why I don't want to see you -- you should understand, since you are ME, after all -- but I wanted to offer my thanks nonetheless."

She released the hand and almost left, but then took the hand back up. "I think Jane doesn't know you can speak. You should surprise her with that sometime." A small, cunning smile briefly appeared on her face, then vanished again a moment later. Morgendorffer turned once more and this time left the room.

XXXX

"I stopped by the old house and didn't see any signs of anybody, except a few broken bones in the backyard..." Penny said, telling of what she had done in Lawndale so far.

"That would be Trent," Jane said with a sigh. "I...I didn't bury him deep enough."

Penny embraced her sister again as they both silently wept over the news. Finally, they withdrew and wiped their eyes and runny noses.

Something occured to Jane. "Where's Chiquito?" She loathed the parrot, but Penny was fond enough of him.

Penny shrugged. "I set him free once things started seriously breaking down in Honduras. I figured he'd have a better chance in the jungle with his own kind than with me."

Jane nodded. "And when did you lose your eye?"

"Mexico." Penny shuddered at the name. "I was being 'escorted' by a renegade unit from the Mexican army to a nice place they could get to know me better, when a group of zombies attacked us. One of them pulled out a grenade, but held it too long -- it went off in his hand, killing him, and catching me in the face with some of the shrapnel. It was the second-worst pain I had ever felt."

"What was the worst?" Jane asked, almost afraid to know.

"When I had to cut my ruined eye out that night, and sanitize it with some booze."

Jane grimaced in horror. "Holy shit! You couldn't have found, I dunno, a doctor, or some anesthesia, or something? Holy shit!"

Penny shook her head. "By that time, nearly everybody was already dead, and all the clinics and hospitals were either looted or swarming. I was lucky to have the booze to disinfect with, to be honest."

Jane shook her head, still horrified at the tale.

"...Penny, how did you even survive the disease?" It had suddenly occured to her that nobody was supposed to be naturally immune. "You didn't come in through the attic, did you?"

"Huh?" Penny looked confused at the question. "No...I just figured that naturally-occuring immunity must have been rare...I guess it's genetic?" Penny shrugged.

"But then, Trent wouldn't have died," Jane argued. "Do you remember the feathers you sent me a few weeks before everything went to hell? Did you get sick handling them before you mailed them off?"

Penny cast her memory to back before the world ended. "Hm...actually, I do remember getting sick before sending them to you. Did you get sick off them?"

Jane nodded. "Daria thought that my immunity might have come from those feathers -- and I guess she was right."

"I'm glad your friend Daria survived, Jane," Penny said, shifting the subject. "The past months have been hell alone. At least you had your best friend with you the whole time."

Jane got a pained look on her face. "Welllllll, that's kinda the truth, but things are a lot more complicated than that. You see, Penny, there's something funny about the attic of this house..."

XXXXXXXXXX

You know, I wish I wasn't too lazy to fire uo instead of just starting a new .txt file on my Desktop. If I used OpenOffice, I could do fancy tricks like italics -- believe me, there are a lot of places in my fics where I would have loved to use italics, but I had to settle for plain ol' straight letters because I don't know the HTML stuff and I wasn't using Openoffice. Oh well. :( 


	7. Chapter 7

Penny coolly observed the lifeless form of Daria reclining on the bed, Jane watching her sister anxiously for approval or disapproval. Jane was afraid Penny would react with the same hostility that Morgendorffer had, but not clueing Penny in on the fact that she bunked with a zombie would probably result in one or more head being blown off.

Finally, Penny shrugged. "I'll take your word for it, Jane. I never met a zombie that still had its wits intact..." Penny trailed off, lost in thought.

"...And?" Jane prompted.

"I dunno," Penny frowned. "In the past few months..." Penny shook her head. "I'm probably imagining things."

She finally faced Jane. "If your friend goes bite-happy, though, I will kill her." She emphasized her point by patting the hilt of the machete belted to her waist. Jane nodded.

XXXX

After over two weeks of setting up and trial and error, the women of 1111 Glen Oaks Lane had finally managed to set up the clean room. The entire attic was now sealed off from the rest of the house, and entry was gained via suits which were entered like a full-body glove. (It was similar to the setup of the room where the patients had been kept in the old adaptation of the Andromeda Strain, except the suits weren't bound to the wall by an accordion). It was decided that Jane and Morgendorffer should be the ones to open the door next -- after all, why break from tradition?

The duo stared apprehensively at the attic's door. "You're sure this room is sterile, amiga?" Jane asked.

Morgendorffer nodded. "The only way it could be more sterile would be if the Earth fell into the sun." Jane grimaced and nodded.

Jane began to reach for the doorknob, then pulled back. "Shall you do the honors?"

Morgendorffer thought a moment. "No. The last time I opened that door, I had to kill my sister and myself. Call me superstitious, but I'd say that's bad luck."

Jane shrugged, then reached for the doorknob again. She slowly turned it, then pulled it back excruciatingly slowly...

To find a bare closet, the fuse box at the back.

"Huh?" Jane said, startled. She closed the door and opened it again, revealing the same site.

Penny, watching from outside the confines of the safe room (with the automatic rifle trained on the door) rolled her eyes.

Morgendorffer sighed. "I think God hates me," as she shooed Jane to the side and opened the door. A moment later, the customary 'thump' of a new Daria hitting the floor on the other side reached everyone's ears.

XXXX

Consciousness returned to Daria of Barksdale moments after she lost it. The mirror at the rear of the closet had given her a fright; it had distorted her reflection, making it look as if she had worn the oddest garment, and someone appeared to stand next to her...

Adjusting her glasses after they had fallen askew on her nose, she realized that her reflection and its companion were, in fact, leaning over her and therefore could not possibly be reflections in a mirror.

"By the Lord!" she exclaimed, crossing herself.

XXXX

Morgendorffer bent over her doppleganger. Instead of the thick frames belonging to her and the other Darias she had met, this one had golden wire-framed spectacles. She bore the same shade of green in her dress, but that was it -- she literally wore a dress. She wasn't as fashionable as Quinn, but guessed that the style came from around the turn of the last century, maybe a little before.

The Victorian-era Daria opened her eyes and, upon sighting herself and Jane, shouted "By the Lord!" and crossed herself. Morgendorffer rolled her eyes.

"You're not Martians," the woman finally said, more stiffly. Jane and Morgendorffer exchanged a puzzled glance.

"That's right, we're not Martians," Jane finally said, in a 'calm the crazy person' voice.

"Just before we stopped receiving telegraphs from Washington City, Mr. Lowell announced that no signs of life were left on the surface of that thrice-damned planet. So tell me, are you Venusians? Jovians, maybe?"

Morgendorffer and Jane exchanged another look, this one of worry. "What do you mean, Mr. Lowell? Why did telegraphs stop arriving from Washington?"

The local Daria turned her nose up. "I see no need to supply information to extraterrestrials who maraud about in my own face. If you can change your shape at will, have the good grace to masquerade as somebody else."

This threw Morgendorffer for a loop. "Uh...extraterrestrials? I'm a human, from Earth. Same as Jane here," she said, pointing to her friend.

"Prove it," her counterpart said with narrowed eyes. "Take off your space-suit. If you really aren't from the stars, then you should be able to tolerate our air and our diseases."

Morgendorffer shook her head vigorously. "We can't! We're, uh, carriers of a terrible disease that we don't want to spread around."

The other Daria seemed to consider this for a moment, then slowly nodded. "Very well, spaceman. No matter which planet you are from, you show greater courtesy and restraint than a base Martian." She made a face at the utterance of the last.

"What's this about Martians, anyway?" Jane asked, curious.

Though she still seemed wary of the 'aliens', the other Daria decided to oblige Jane. "A little while over three years ago, Mr. Lowell noted explosions on the surface of Mars, which he deduced to be launches of space vehicles built by the Martians there. It took them a week to arrive to our planet, where we anticipated a warm welcome from our closest neighbor."

"Treachery!" she suddenly shouted, angrily slamming a fist against the nearby wall. "They attacked us, with unstoppable war machines! Poison gas, heat rays, and their infernal tripods were immune to our greatest weaponry! Nothing stopped their advance!"

Jane looked at Morgendorffer, who mouthed 'War of the Worlds', to Jane, who nodded.

"The invaders were struck down, finally, by the unlikeliest of means -- simple bacteria, for which they had no resistance, being from Mars." She snorted. "Of course, the opposite held true, too. Men caught an illness from studying the Martian bodies which struck them dead within hours, only -- in the grossest blasphemy ever conceived -- to rise from death shortly after, bereft of wits and possessing only a mad hunger for live flesh."

XXXXXXXXXX

A new OO chapter! Hooray!

(I would post this over on PPMB, but I'd feel weird just posting the chapter by itself...I'd also feel weird reposting the whole story in one giant chunk...and I'd feel weird just linking to the story, too.) 


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